


Animal Cops: Jurassic

by afterandalasia



Series: Jurassic Life: The Dinosaur Sanctuary Series [2]
Category: Jurassic World (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Animal Shelter, Dinosaur Eggs, Dinosaurs, Established Claire Dearing/Owen Grady, F/M, Happy Ending, Raptor Parent Owen, Referenced Harm to Animals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-28
Updated: 2016-03-28
Packaged: 2018-05-29 19:18:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6389815
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/afterandalasia/pseuds/afterandalasia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Unfortunately, it's not really possible to have a quiet day when you run a sanctuary for dinosaurs. If it isn't abandoned pets or visiting family members, it's businessmen with a strange sense of humour or phone calls from the SPCA. Sometimes Claire Dearing wonders how she manages to keep track of all of this lunacy.</p><p>Or maybe someone up there just particularly hates her this weekend.</p><p> </p><p>(Rating for referenced/discussed animal cruelty.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Animal Cops: Jurassic

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by, and based on, the 1997 TV show _Monkey Business_ which chronicled the real-life development of monkey and ape sanctuary _Monkey World_ in the UK. It follows the amazing work of Jim and Alison Cronin in rescuing animals and working abroad for animal rights.
> 
> This time around, there was also some pretty heavy influence from _Animal Cops_ creeping in, as well, particularly in the last third of the fic.

The day started like rather too many did.

“Found by the front gates,” said Zara, putting down the cat carrier on Claire’s desk. It was nearly as tall as Claire’s piles of paperwork. “Outside of the view of the security cameras of course.”

Owen lifted his head and took one look. “Oh _hell_.”

He was at least getting better at not swearing with the years, Claire had to admit. She lifted up the piece of paper that had been taped to the front – it said ‘Please help us’ in blocky capitals – and poked her pen through the upper corner of the grate to push down the towel lining the inside. In the gloom, she could see two small figures huddled at the back of the cage, eyes glinting.

“Mussaurus,” she said. “Two of them.”

“Felt pretty warm,” said Zara. She began to pass out coffee from the tray in her other hand. “Probably a hot water bottle or some handwarmers in there for them.”

“I really thought we’d break the two-month record,” said Owen, getting to his feet. He walked over to Claire’s desk and turned the carrier round so that its mouth was facing him, before pulling off the note altogether, crumpling it into a ball and chucking it across the room into the recycling.

“Get the cameras on this one?” Zara passed the penultimate coffee to Claire. Barry, as usual, would have to be found to be given his, and would probably drink it without even tasting it.

Claire nodded. “It would be worth it. We were seeing a decrease in mussasaur abandonment, but I heard from Tim that they’re seeing an upswing again. Catch them in quarantine later.”

Owen opened the front of the carrier and peeled down the towel, Making hushed clicking sounds with his tongue, he reached in, and moments later had scooped both mussasaurs into his hand and straightened up, cradling them against his chest.

“They look in decent condition,” he said, gently running a finger down one’s back. It wasn’t the sort of gentleness that he showed for the girls; they were a different matter. But mussasaurus, although surprisingly hardy for their size, were still small reptiles. “This one’s maybe six, seven. The other’s younger.” He frowned. “Claws have been cut away on the young one.”

“Tim won’t like that,” Zara said. After this many years, she knew him as well as Claire did. He had known Owen longer, had been in communication ever since Owen and Barry had put together their idea, absurd at the time, to open a dinosaur sanctuary that specialised in carnivores.

“Yes, but he’ll take them anyway,” said Claire. “I’ll give him an email, see when someone’s going to be free, or whether he wants to send us one of the travel carriers again. I don’t think we’ve got one at the moment. Would they be in good enough condition to fly, Owen?”

“Give them a few days, to be sure.”

A cautious yes, then. Claire picked up her coffee with one hand even as she kept working through her emails with the other. Seeing one from her sister, she pulled it up to high priority and opened it immediately. “Zach and Grey will be here at eight-thirty; they ended up on an earlier train. Karen has given permission for them to be filmed, but she said that we need to check with them on the day.” She sighed. “And Mr. Robert should be here in the afternoon.”

“No rest for the wicked.” Checking her watch, Zara pulled out her smartphone and raised one immaculate eyebrow. “Messages already. Looks like it’s going to be an interesting day.”

“I truly hope not,” Claire sighed. Interesting days tended to be interesting precisely because things went _wrong_.

 

 

 

By the time the mussasaurs were settled and the first post started arriving, the sun was coming up. Zara settled in to communication, Owen had gone to help with the tail end of the morning feedings, and Claire fought her way through as many of the urgent messages as she could before the park opened and things really got underway.

“It’s the SPCA,” said Zara suddenly, just as Claire was about to go and find her nephews. The camera crew looked up with renewed interest. “They’re petitioning a judge for a seizure warrant. Tomorrow.”

Immediately, Claire held out her hand for the phone. “I’ll take it,” she said. “Can you find Zach and Gray? There’s a picture–”

“On your phone, got it.” Zara stood up and, in a well-practiced move in the tight corner, they swapped locations to let Claire take the call. On her way out, Zara picked up Claire’s phone from her desk, and one of the cameramen grabbed his portable camcorder to follow her. The one in the office had long since earned its own tripod, which shared the corner with a potted plant and a filing cabinet.

“Good morning,” said Claire. She put the phone on speaker for the benefit of the camera, pulling over a pad of paper with her right. “Claire Dearing here.”

“ _Oh, hi, Claire,_ ” said the voice at the other end of the phone. Claire recognised Jenny, and relaxed slightly. “ _Sorry for the short notice, we didn’t get much warning on this ourselves. We’re raiding a backyard zoo tomorrow, lack of care and we think he might have protected species._ ”

“Any news yet on what?”

“ _No, sorry, my officers only managed to see the outside of the building. Heard dinos in there, though, and there’s a definite smell of them._ ”

Mystery dinosaurs, probable bad conditions. There were various reasons that Claire had to be the one to go to calls like these, and her experience with them was not even the main one. Owen’s temper just would not stand some of the things that she had seen.

“Are you just after an expert, or do you think that you’re going to need housing on these ones?”

Jenny huffed. “ _Again, no clue what species we’re looking at. We might need specialist housing for them._ ”

“You all right with us bringing our camera crew as well?”

“ _Sure._ ” It had been somewhere around the third season that Claire had first asked if it would be possible to bring the cameras with them, to film the Jurassic World side of things. The SPCA had been filming for some years, and Claire had actually appeared a few times when there had been dinosaur rescues, but that had only been a few a year when they had needed the housing. Nowadays, they called whenever there was a dinosaur involved, and the two crews were in semi-regular contact as well. “ _It’s going to be at dawn. Meet us at the station._ ”

“See you then. Bye, Jenny.”

“ _Bye._ ”

The phone clicked off, and Claire put down the receiver, before turning to look to the cameras. Or, more precisely, the sound man, because looking straight at the cameras did not work too well.

“Looks like you’re in for a busy week,” said Greg. He seemed to find it amusing that so many people struggled to remember his name, and called him ‘the narrator’ on a regular basis even after working with him for years.

“Dinosaurs don’t take summer breaks, so neither do we,” she replied. It was a variation on a theme that had been spoken from the beginning. “Dinosaur ownership might be decreasing, but as we finally get the changes in the law we’re still dealing with cases. And of course, as it becomes more clandestine, the cases with which we do deal are changing in character.”

Five years ago, private owners would have contacted the park themselves and offered up their animals. Some had the audacity to try to _sell_ their dinosaurs to the park. But there had been a general acceptance that it was for the good of the animal, and no few scenes of tears had occurred. Some of their paddocks had plaques in their viewing platforms talking about the ‘adoption’ of the animals; while some adoptions were sponsorships, some were the original owners, just wanting a tie to the pets it had been so hard to give up.

Nowadays, things were changing. More and more of the dinosaurs they received were cruelty cases, kept hidden and therefore indoors, away from the sun that they needed so much. They had to be given false names, there had been discussions with lawyers on how episodes would need to be cut and framed so as to protect the identity of the animals and in some cases the owners, and more and more often the dinosaurs’ emotional scars were severe and deep.

“Do you ever think there will be a day when Jurassic World runs out of cases?” said Greg.

“Frankly? No,” she said, without even having to think. “But I really wish there could be.”

 

 

 

Both of the boys were older than she remembered, and looked at her uncertainly. It was all very well to say that dinosaurs needed the keepers at the park every day of the year, but it was quite another to look at her nephews and realise that she had not seen them for half of Zach’s life, for just about any of Gray’s.

“Aunt Claire?” said Gray. Well, at least they had seen a recent enough picture to recognise her as well, she supposed.

She gave them her bright, for-tourists smile, before catching herself and offering a real one instead. “Hi, boys. I’m sorry that I was late, I was dealing with some urgent zoo business.”

“I was just showing Zach and Gray our _Triceratops_ _prorsus_ ,” said Zara.

They only had two, both elderly and irascible, the female from a backyard zoo and the male from a legitimate but small zoo that had been forced to close down. Most of their younger or more interesting animals had found homes more easily, but the old triceratops had been hard to home. His relationship of mutual grumping with the female had been one of the background threads of season two.

“Is it true that his name is Ian?” said Gray.

At that, Claire had to stop her smile from turning to laughter. “No, and I would imagine that Ian Malcolm is very annoyed at the idea. His actual name is Kúrahus, from the Pawnee for ‘old man’. The female is called Sarah, though. Doctor Harding, who used to work here with Owen and Barry, named her when she was rehomed.”

Gray paused, a thoughtful look in his eyes as he turned back to watch the two dinosaurs grumbling and half-heartedly snapping at each other over a branch. Of course, there were plenty of branches, but they were both interested in the same one. “As in Sarah Harding?” he said after a moment.

“Actually, it was her father, but he did name the triceratops after her. Sarah at least considers it a compliment.”

Found it hugely entertaining, in fact, but that was perhaps neither here nor there.

Behind the two boys, Zara gave her an encouraging smile. She had been privy to more than one of Claire’s moments of uncertainty about bringing the boys to the park for a week, but as Karen had said it was a chance for them to get away. Claire also suspected that it would be a chance for their parents to get some particularly bitter arguments out of the way; their divorce was turning out to be possibly even more of a disaster than the marriage had been.

“Is there anything else that you’d like to see first, or would you like to skip straight to the special access part of your visit?” said Claire. Gray’s eyes lit up, and Zach looked interested for a moment before catching himself and slipping back into studied boredom as he watched the triceratops.

“Does it have to do with the TV?” said Gray.

“Well, it can if you want to,” Claire said. “But mostly it means that you can ride with the keepers, see the backstage, if you will.”

“So, we’re spending a holiday doing what you guys do for a job?” Zach said. He might not have looked bored, but he also looked somewhat unimpressed by the idea.

“More like, you get to do the best bits of everyone’s jobs,” said Zara. “And get to skip the phone-answering, the floor-sweeping, or the dino dung duty.”

“And if you don’t want to be involved in that, then you at least get a much closer look at the animals,” added Claire. Owen had steadfastly assured her that working with dinosaurs would appeal to boys of her nephews age, but she had long suspected suspect that Owen’s youth had featured a significantly larger nerdy streak than he nowadays let on. “Our guests line up to see the T-Rex get her teeth brushed, but most of them have to be more than ten feet away.”

“Do we get to see the velociraptors, and the Indominus, as well?”

“Not as close,” said Claire. “But yes, you can meet the girls.”

It had slipped out before she even realised it. Most of the time she was good at calling them _the velociraptors_ , or _the raptors_ if something less formal was acceptable. She had an agreement with the director to cut any moment that she called them Owen’s _girls_ , with the supposed explanation that it made them seem too tame, took away their danger. That was true as well, of course, but frankly Claire just could not get over the embarrassment of how she had derided Owen for first saying it but now, with the passing years, had found herself saying it more and more as well.

Gray, luckily, did not seem to notice, but Zach raised an eyebrow.

“And I think,” said Claire quickly, looking at her watch, “that next up is our maiasauras’ feeding.” She glanced down, and was glad to note that both of the boys were wearing solid shoes. People were almost uniformly surprised to see her doing the same, but there were almost never long shots of her when she was at the park itself. Only when dealing with lawyers, and those were the days that she needed the four-inch heels just to give herself a little bit more gravitas.

(Owen had said that it made Claire a little bit more like a raptor, affixing sharp points to her feet. She had rolled her eyes and ignored him, but she did occasionally wear the blue scale-patterned ones that he had bought her.)

“Shall we?”

 

 

 

The maiasauras had the largest range in the park, where there were five of them to only the one Tyrannosaur, and other than the Tyrannosaur and the Indominus the matriarch of the pack was the largest animal in the park. She was also the oldest, at least ninety and possibly even nearing her century, and more than canny enough to know when feeding time was coming up.

Their feeding areas were scattered around the enclosure, some on the walls and some in artificial trees that had been constructed, sturdy enough to handle even a maiasaura lazily leaning against them. Openings and nets at various heights allowed them to keep up some variety.

“Here,” said Zara and, god, she had thought of everything as she produced two of the largest cooking apples that Claire had ever seen. If she weren’t technically employed by the television crew, Claire would have tried to give her a raise. “They like these a lot.”

Gray eagerly took one of the apples from her and ran over to the windows, whose shutters were currently thrown wide to give access to the nets.  He leant out as far as he could, and Zach stepped over and grabbed him by the back of his belt before Claire could even manage to say anything. Judging by Zach’s expression, this was not too much of a surprise for him.

The matriarch maiasaura plodded over, her footsteps like a heartbeat in the observation tower, and sniffed at the apples. She opened her mouth – she still had teeth, growing them regularly as all of the dinosaurs did – and licked both the apple and Gray’s wrist with a slurping sound, leaving strings of drool in her wake. A second lick, and then she tilted her head and leant forward to very delicately put her mouth around Gray’s hand, not closing it but letting her tongue wrap around the apple and pluck it from his grip. Gray looked entranced as she drew her head back, crunched the apple a few times, and huffed her approval as she swallowed.

“Woah…” he said.

“Not many people get to say they’ve done _that_ ,” said Zara.

“That is so gross,” said Zach flatly, as Gray pulled back into the room and tried to shake the dinosaur saliva off his hand.

“It’s no grosser than your engine oil,” Gray shot back.

“Okay,” said Claire quickly, because if nothing else growing up with her sister had left her able to spot a sibling argument when it was brewing. “How about we go and see the velociraptors, and you boys can meet Owen, hmm?”

 

 

 

 

 

Velociraptors were still, in many ways, the stars of the show. They had the T-Rex; they had Indy, although she was only viewable one day a week, and at any sign of agitation that was shut off again. Perhaps nowadays the T-Rex was getting old, and moved more slowly – Dr. Gutierrez was starting to watch cautiously for signs of arthritis. When she roared, people shrank away, shuddered, occasionally screamed. Even when they knew it was coming.

But the raptors _sparked_ something in people, fascinated and terrified on a different level than the T-Rex did. Seeing them respond to Owen’s clicker training did not always make them look like pets, because sometimes it showcased their intelligence so brilliantly. Following scent trails; catching fish specifically placed into their pool; investigating ropes dangling from trees, some of which had large chunks of meat on the end; exploring the sheds of other dinosaur species bought in; breaking open pumpkins to get to chunks of meat hidden inside.

They deliberately kept them away from the ‘cuter’ enrichments, like mirrors, walking through paint, or letting them roll in perfume, unless they were closed for a day and the girls could act like the children that they still sometimes were. Their fortnightly visits to the Indominus enclosure, through the special walkway that had been constructed, were also away from the public. They did not want to over-stimulate the Indominus while she was still so fragile.

There was something about raptors that set off the _here be dragons_ fear in peoples’ brains. At first, Claire had wondered what it was; nowadays, she thought it was the fact that, of all of the dinosaurs in the park, they seemed to _look back_.

She was a little ashamed to realise that she did not know the boys’ exact ages, but Zach looked old enough to go with Owen and meet the raptors face-to-face, albeit through the bars. There was, she was sure, a pretty distinct look of interest before he pushed it down again. Yes, definitely late teens.

Gray, on the other hand, looked like he might be better off viewing from the walkways around the top of the pen. They were just for employees as well, not the public, so it was still a treat.

“That’s Charlie,” said Claire, pointing out the daftest of their raptors. She had her nose buried in a pumpkin, backside wiggling enthusiastically. Charlie was the hardest to take seriously sometimes, and the worst thief. There had been an incident caught on camera where she had stolen an entire toolbox that had been left too close to the bars, and the raptors had entertained themselves with tools for days. “She was rescued eight years ago.”

“I saw it on TV,” said Gray, taking her by surprise. She hadn’t thought that her nephews might have seen the show; they weren’t that popular, after all. A niche programme. After these years, she knows not to look at the camera that’s still with them, but she does glance at Zara. Zara shrugs. “She came from outside Houston, right?”

“No, that was Delta. Charlie was in Arizona.”

They had done an episode talking specially about their raptors, and apparently it had been quite a hit. Their special on the T-Rex had gone down nearly, but not quite, as well.

“We get the theropod dinosaurs from all over the country,” she said. They’d had interest from outside, for that matter, but so far they had not been able to take the dinosaurs and had only been able to offer legal advice and assistance.

“Is it true that their encephalization quotient is as high as dolphins or corvids?”

 _Wow_ , it had been a long time since she had heard talk about encephalization quotients. “Yes,” said Claire. “Scientists don’t think that it correlates directly with intelligence, but it does seem to be a good indicator. Right there,” she pointed down to the bars, where Owen was showing Zach their latest contraption for keeping the raptors entertained. “The raptors have to pull the levers to open the flaps, get the food out. But some of the levers don’t do anything. We can change which ones, so it’s like a new puzzle each time.”

Gray fell silent for a few minutes, watching Blue and Echo sniff and test the levels, slowly working the food down through the levels of wire mesh to the open tray below. Although they usually got bigger food, they loved rats, especially ones that had been gut-loaded with strawberries, of all things. Watching them work, watching them _think_ , was an eerie experience. For Claire, at least. Owen seemed more awed by it.

“Are our parents getting divorced?” said Gray suddenly.

Claire looked down sharply, not sure how to react. Had Karen and Scott not told the boys? She knew that Karen was having trouble accepting the divorce, thinking herself a failure in the same way that she had always considered their parents a failure for divorcing, but Claire had been more pragmatic about the whole thing.

“Pardon?” she said.

“They’re getting mail from two different lawyers. And they’re not speaking.”

Putting aside the raptors, Claire turned to her nephew, and crouched down so that she was closer to his level. It seemed like most of her experience with people was in court, these days, but in the past she had spent more time trying to coax owners to give up their pets.

“Would it be bad, if they were divorcing?” she said quietly.

Gray, naturally, looked at her as if she had gone mad. “They can’t _divorce_ ,” he said, starting to sniffle. “They – they can’t!”

Most of what Claire remembered, when her parents finally divorced, was relief that they fighting would be over. Then again, she had been a bit older than Gray was now, and Karen had warned her that he struggled to accept change sometimes. “Hey, hey,” she said. She tried to take his hands, but he shied away from her touch. “I know that you’d like to see your parents together, and happy. But… what’s more important? Together, or happy?”

“Why do I have to choose?” Gray said.

“Because the world isn’t perfect,” said Claire. It didn’t look like it reassured him too much. She tried again. “I’m guessing your Mom and Dad have been arguing for a while, right?”

Gray nodded, still sniffling. There were tears in his eyes and snot starting to run from his nose, and pretty much all of this was part of the reason that Claire had never wanted children.

“Well, most of the time, when people get divorced, they’re happier afterwards. They might even be friends again.” From what she had gathered from Karen, that was not likely to be the case here, but miracles had happened. “And this way, when you see your Mom, she’ll be happy, and when you see your Dad, he’ll be happy. That’s got to be better, right?”

She really wished that she wasn’t so bad at this. At children in general. Adults, she could just about handle, because you could actually reason with them more easily. Or at least, if they were being unreasonable, tell them so.

“ _No_ ,” said Gray. Because that was such a logical response.

Zara swooped in. “I’ve got younger siblings,” she said to Claire in an undertone. She produced a packet of tissues and handed one to Gray. “How about you tell me about it, hmm?”

She had the tone of voice, that was the thing. The one that always seemed to work with children, and which Claire had never managed to cultivate. As Gray turned, starting to cry more, to face Zara, Claire gave up and got to her feet. She looked across to see that the crew had already stopped filming, and were looking more than a little uncomfortable about being here themselves.

‘Sorry’ she mouthed to Greg. He shrugged, a pointed down in Owen’s direction with a questioning expression. She nodded, and he hustled his crew away.

At least dinosaurs were easy to handle.

 

 

 

Claire had absolutely no idea what Owen had said or done, but her nephews had both warmed to him immediately. Far more so than they had to Claire, in fact. Perhaps it was just that being the dinosaur keeper and trainer was a significantly cooler job than acting as the sort of administrator-slash-lawyer-slash-accountant that Claire was. It sounded better if you called the job Director, but not that much more interesting.

“We’re trying to scale up the levers-system for the Indominus,” said Owen, between eating his fries with his fingers. Claire opted for a knife and fork. “She’s kinda hard to get the enrichment sorted for, you know? She never had any when she was young,” he emphasised the point with a jab of a fry into ketchup, “and her size makes it difficult to do what we do for the raptors. You know?”

Despite probably having no idea, the boys nodded along.

“And she’s totally different from the T-Rex.” He shook his head. “ _Totally_ different, behaviour-wise, the raptor side has really dominated. She–”

“Blast,” said Claire, catching sight of the clock behind Owen. She put down her knife and fork and wiped her mouth with her napkin as she got to her feet. “Mr. Roberts. I’ve got about ten minutes.”

“Do you want me to come with you?” said Owen.

She waved at him to keep sitting down. “No, no. Are you boys okay to stay with Owen?” She was not all that surprised when they nodded. How Owen had that effect, she had no idea; she had taken time to come around to him. “I think it’s going to be finance talk.”

“Can we get ice cream?” said Gray, looking straight at Owen.

Claire was about to say no, Karen had been fussing over what they were supposed to eat, but Owen nodded as he licked his fingers. “Sure. What flavours?”

She left them to it. If Karen and Scott had not even been honest with them about the divorce, a little ice cream was really not the worst thing in the world.

She straightened her hair as best she could by running her fingers through it on her way back to the office. Greg was doing a piece to the camera about how there was going to be a meeting with a businessman, and Claire made sure to skirt out of the sight of the camera.

One of the crew raised his hand to hail her, and she crossed over to where he stood. “Hi, Ms. Dearing,” he said, in an undertone. “Mr. Roberts is already here, we suggested that he wait in your office.”

Great. A punctual businessman, just when she didn’t want one. She smiled, and thanked the crewman, all the same.

There was a spare set of clothes kept in a cupboard in the women’s toilets, and Claire changed hastily, into a pristine white suit that would not last long when she was working in the park proper, and high heels. She had mastered them while she was still in her teens, but only tended to break them out for the office nowadays. Or when she needed the mental power boost of being taller.

She checked her phone. Four minutes late. When you worked with animals, that was nothing.

“I’m terribly sorry, Mr. Roberts,” she said, as she briskly entered the room. There was already a camera set up, and Mr. Roberts himself looked perfectly comfortable in front of it. “There was a delay with…”

She trailed off as she looked at Mr. Roberts properly. Or, to be precise, _not_ Mr. Roberts.

“Mr. Masrani?”

The words came out a little bit more strangled than Claire usually resorted to, but she did not often walk into her office and find one of the richest men in the world there. Robert Masrani gave her a brilliant smile, and she cursed every crewman and door staff and _person_ who had not recognised him until he was sitting in her office.

“Good afternoon, Ms. Dearing,” he said, as if she were not looking at him in nigh-bewilderment. “I hope you will excuse the subterfuge. I had hoped to see the Park, as it were, incognito. Like a normal visitor. And I must say, it has been quite a wonderful day.”

She was still staring at him. Words would be a good idea. She had spoken to some very rich and very powerful people over the years, but she had always had least had some warning that she was going to be facing them. “You’ve had a tour of the park?” Claire managed.

But Masrani shook his head. “Oh, no, I just picked up one of the maps from your shop and showed myself around. A beautiful place you have here, especially in the good weather. And your Ankylosaurs certainly seem to enjoy their water.”

“It was newly built last year,” said Claire. She was still struggling to get past the fact that _Robert Masrani_ was calmly sitting in her office discussing Ankylosaurs. “They prefer moving water over still.”

“You care about your animals. That is excellent,” said Masrani. “And _that_ is why I wish to talk to you about working with your park.”

So that part, at least, was true. Claire carefully walked round to her desk and sat down, not quite able to talk her eyes off Masrani the entire time. She could feel the original blank starting to fill back in, thoughts starting to become a possibility, but it was still more than a little unreal to be sitting opposite the entrepreneur. “Indeed?”

“Oh, yes.” Masrani’s smile was absolutely dazzling, though that was probably largely his magnetism. “When I was a child, I visited Hammond’s sanctuary. You remember it?”

“Of course,” said Claire. It was the original home of Clever Girl, of their T-Rex, and of two of their maiasauras. After Hammond’s health had failed him, he had looked for somewhere that lived up to his high standards in a sanctuary – only Jurassic Park, then in its early days and before Owen and Claire had met, had fit the bill. A lot of his fame had been transferred to them. “I am lucky enough to have met Mr. Hammond himself, as well.”

Masrani nodded. “Then I think you will understand what it is that made me care quite so much about what you do.”

 

 

 

She was still shell-shocked the following morning, to judge by the looks that Jenny was giving her when she met the SPCA team at the station in the early hours of the following morning. Claire had bought Barry with her, as he seemed to have a knack for just about any species and a far more level head than Owen when it came to the possible threatening and shouting of private owners, and one of their vans which could hold anything up to an adult Gallimimus or Pachycephalosaurus. Although the Pachs tended to need a little more sedation, just to be on the safe side. They’d had to flatten out a number of dented body panels in their time.

“You okay?” said Jenny, as they waited a mile down the road from the property while the warrant was served. It pulled Claire from her trance, watching clouds and picturing the enclosures that they could build with what Masrani was offering. There was adjacent land that they could buy – they could even look at opening to those requests for help from Europe and Asia that they had been having to turn down.

“Interesting day yesterday,” said Claire, by way of understatement. “Business deal went in an unexpected direction.”

“Need to wait for the show to air?” said Jenny wryly.

Claire smiled. “I’m afraid so.” Everything was going to have to remain confidential, until all of the paperwork had been sorted out. Vivian, who had started as their lawyer but was now their friend as well, was a godsend when it came to it. “But you’re right,” she added. “I need to keep my head in the game.”

One of the other deputies, with a pair of binoculars, turned and gave them the thumbs-up. Warrant served, time to move in.

Jurassic Park was only represented because they knew that they were dinosaurs on the property. Claire climbed back into the passenger seat of their van and waited for the train of SPCA vehicles to head up the road, before Barry followed them over. Luckily, being this far back tended to mean that they missed the worst of the arguments and occasional fits of temper from owners, but seeing the Jurassic Park logo seemed to bring out the worst in some people.

Jenny was already waiting, and waved them over to the right hand side where a rather shaky-looking barn sat behind the property. Muttering something to himself, Barry pulled the van around, and parked up right outside.

“This is where we heard them,” said Jenny, starting over the sound of the engine and not dropping her voice much even as the van stopped and Claire and Barry climbed down. “Definitely dinosaur sounds.”

The dinosaurs were clearly only a branch of the problem. When Claire looked over, she could see the SPCA technicians looking with some despair at the two tigers pacing in their cages, the lion looking desolately out from its den, and three wolves following the people that walked in front of their cage. That was beside the cats watching from every corner of the yard, the half-dozen dogs barking from inside the house, and goodness only knew what else in there as well Every animal that Claire could see looked hungry. In all likelihood, the dinosaurs were as well. But there would be no feeding them until they were accounted for as evidence.

Waiting by the barn was Nick, another of the deputies that Claire had met on several occasions. He hefted a pair of bolt-cutters off his shoulders as they approached, and nodded to the lock. “Owner refuses to give up the keys,” he said.

“Well, we’ve got the warrant,” Jenny replied, with a gesture to the lock. “Open it up.”

Claire stayed back, letting them go first, as they had to. While Jurassic Park had extra accreditations to work with the SPCA, they were still secondary here. The two sets of cameras coordinated around them to get good shots as Nick snipped open the padlock – they would probably exchange footage later, to be quite honest, although they would deny that – and the two deputies hauled open the gates to the barn.

The smell that rolled out was not quite _dinosaur_. Or at least, it was not _healthy_ dinosaur; Claire but her hand to her mouth and suppressed the jolt of nausea that was partly the smell, and partially the knowledge that it came from a carnivorous dinosaur fed badly.

“That’s a meat-eater,” she said, warning in her words. Jenny and Nick looked at each other grimly.

“Well,” said Nick, “fits with the other animals they’ve got here.”

Both deputies had torches, and as they stepped in they scanned the stretches of wall closest to the door, looking for switches. There were some on Nick’s side, but when he flipped them nothing happened, and he sighed.

“Electric cut?”

Jenny shrugged. “Could just be a bad line.”

From the darkness further into the barn, there was a definitely-dinosaur _hiss_. Both deputies froze, and looked round to Claire and Barry. At the unspoken request, they picked their way to the entrance of the barn, though they stayed in the sunlight. A growl followed, low and throaty, but it sounded markedly more scared than aggressive.

“Not a raptor,” said Barry. “But not a T-Rex. Mid-sized carnivore.”

Jenny panned her torch across the barn, and let out a relieved huff at the sight of pretty thick bars. Given the rather shoddy state of the barn, Claire did not say that they were only as good as what they were attached to. But the scan of her torch seemed to leave a pale line against the darkness, and when she panned it back again it left another streak that lingered and only slowly faded.

“What the…” said Nick.

Claire recognised that, though. Another rare dinosaur, much prized for its ‘exotic’ appearance. “Carnotaurs,” she said. “They’re carnotaurs.” She turned to Barry. “We should be able to transport them, right?”

“Sure,” said Barry, with a slow nod. “Need to cover the windows, keep them calm, but we can handle that size.”

“Okay, but we are going to need some light to check this place out,” said Jenny. “You can transport these guys in the dark, but we’re going to need to light this place up for now. Get some spotlights in here.”

“It will be unpleasant for them,” said Claire, “but it will not harm them in the long run as long as you don’t shine the lights directly into their eyes. If they do have a den of some sort, they’ll probably retreat into it.”

“Yeah, we can’t see a damn thing in here,” said Jenny. “Let’s back on out.”

She waved Nick out with her, and gestured to the cameras to go and find something more interesting to film than them setting up lighting. Claire’s camera team stayed with them, and even helped with laying out some of the cables. They half-shielded the lights and pointed them towards the ground before turning them on, and even then it managed to make the barn feel hugely brighter in its wake.

The two carnotaurs hissed and backed deep into their pen. It was bare bars, with a filthy wet floor, and it stank to high heaven. Both of the deputies were looking at the dinosaurs inside in horror, their thin bodies, the scars and fresh cuts down their sides. Probably fighting over food.

That wasn’t where Claire was looking, though. A pale gleam from one corner had caught her eye, and she used the torch that she had been given to shine brighter light on the black-and-green machinery standing in the corner of the room. “Jenny,” she said, over her shoulder.

“Yeah?”

“That warrant. It’ll be all animals living, dead and unborn, right?”

She knew the language, by now. But she had to check, at this sight. “Of course,” said Jenny, and Claire heard the scrape of her boot on the floor. “Why – oh, fuck.”

They probably couldn’t re-cut this. At least there was always bleeping.

Because standing in the corner of the room, with two large cream eggs inside, was an incubator.

 

 

 

The incubator ended up in their quarantine, and Jenny and Nick accompanied them so that Marty Gutierrez could make an official identification for their paperwork and case as well as for the Park’s sanity. Owen put his arm around Claire’s waist, and she knew it was a sign of how nervous she was that she allowed it to be on camera.

The egg was cream, with bluish veins, maybe eight inches long, and oval with neither end particularly pointed. Marty took careful, precise measurements of length and diameter, down to the millimetre, and then switched on their candler to get a view of the embryo inside and see how developed it was.

The shadow inside filled almost all of the egg. “Nearly full term,” said Marty. “Probably going to be a week at most before it hatches. Now,” he added to the camera, “here’s a really hi-tech test. Owen, do your magic?”

This was usually something that Owen did with the Compsognathus eggs, to check whether they were ready for hatching. Owen peeled herself away from Claire’s side and crossed to the egg, picking it up from the candler. Holding it in front of his face, he wet his lips, then whistled softly.

He held up a finger for quiet, and there was a breathless moment before, very faintly, the egg chirped back.

Jenny and Nick looked amazed, and Owen had that boyish smile on his face that Claire had been amazed to see the first time, and had always thought suited him better than some leery smirk. Carefully, Owen put the egg nearly to the boom microphone and whistled again. This time, the chirp would definitely be audible to the machinery as well.

“Scratch a week,” Marty said. “Try two days, maximum.”

“Well-timed warrant,” said Jenny, folding her arms.

“We’re somewhere between two hundred and three hundred millimetres,” he continued. “That puts us in smallish carnivore range. Coelophysis, perhaps, or Herrerasaurus. Metriacanthosaurus.”

“Or Velociraptor?” said Owen, voice slightly muted. His eyes were fixed on the egg.

Marty slid over to swap the SD card from his camera to the computer. In moments, he was pulling the image of the embryo up, and tweaking the contrast to bring out the lines. With the end of a pencil, he traced the lines of the curled-up embryo, and from where she was standing Claire saw his smile before Owen, before the cameras.

She looked up to Owen, suddenly speechless. He must have seen something in her eyes, because a look of amazement spread across his face, awe and delight, and something so _in love_ already that Claire was glad the cameras were not on him yet, that only she got to see this.

“Well, Owen,” said Marty, and Owen snapped back to earth at least a little, to judge by the way that he looked round. Even if he was cradling the egg as if it would shatter at a breath. “You’re right again. I think we do indeed have two velociraptor eggs.”

As if hearing the words solidified it, Owen gave a delighted laugh, and pulled the egg towards his chest before catching both, becoming more serious, and moving to put the egg back in the incubator.

Claire raised her hand to get the cameraman’s attention, and when the camera panned round made sure to address it. “It’s a really good thing that we got to the eggs before they hatched, though. Many young reptiles are fragile, and dinosaurs are certainly no exception. There’s a moderately high infant mortality rate whether in captivity or in the wild,” she sighed, “though for different reasons, perhaps. But in backyard operations like this one, the mortality rate is almost total. And in this case,” she waved to the eggs, “there wouldn’t even have been other velociraptors to raise them.

“It’s part of their intelligence, really. The cost, in a way. Years of learning, to make the best use of that brain. And no offence to our velociraptors, but it is visible in Delta’s behaviour in particular. We know that she was taken from the wild when she was young, and spent years in isolation. It’s one of the reasons that she gets frustrated more easily than the others, that she has these moments that she does. The Indominus will probably struggle with it for her entire life.”

Which could be decades, but that was a worry for another time. Especially now that Masrani was in the picture. Dear lord, after today she had almost forgotten about Masrani. They had two carnotaurs in their quarantine, who would need larger areas as soon as possible, and velociraptor eggs in their clinic.

Once the cameras were turned off, and everyone was packing up, Owen strode over to Claire and pulled her into a tight hug, breathing hard. She could feel the fear that brushed the edges of him, that he would get it wrong, that he would fail the eggs and the dinosaurs inside them.

“Foxtrot and Golf?” she said quietly.

“Foxtrot and Golf.”

She pressed a quick kiss to his cheek. “I’m guessing we’re sleeping in here with the incubator, then?”

“More like staying awake with the incubator,” he said. She should have seen that one coming. It would probably, at least, be possible to persuade him to have them take turns at being awake. “Let me go get Barry. He’s not going to want to miss this.”

“No wetting their heads,” Claire warned him.

Owen looked as if he was about to make some snappy comeback, then glanced at the incubator again. His expression softened. “I think they’ll be celebration enough by themselves.”

**Author's Note:**

> Raptor Handler Jenny is a real character, credited on imdb and appearing in the LEGO game as well (also from the LEGO game is Sarah the triceratops). Nick is Nick van Owen, because of his ability to break into things. Dr. Marty Gutierrez appears in both books, but did not make it into the movies; he is an expert in identifying reptiles.
> 
> Mussasaurus, maiasauras and carnotaurs appear in _The Lost World_ \- and yes, the carnotaurs really can change from light to dark like this in the book!
> 
> The Pawnee word Kúrahus was sourced on this website: http://zia.aisri.indiana.edu/~dictsearch/
> 
> Chirping to eggs and having them chirp back certainly works with chickens and ducks - I can't say I've ever tried it with reptile eggs.


End file.
